Crazy, crazy, crazy!
I've been waiting to buy an iPhone for ages. The day finally arrived so I went down to U. Village around 7:30am, only 30 minutes before they opened, to stand inline with the other crazed Apple fans. It turns out that people started to wait in line the night before and had wrapped through U. Village all the way back to Office Depot. The Apple employees estimated that they would be able to get through 100 customers an hour. At that rate I would be out of the store by 11ish. Come 9:45a the line had hardly moved so I gave up for the time being.
After working from home for a while, stewing about the fact that I hadn't gotten my hands on one of the shiny new phones I started forming a plan. Head down to the Apple store after work and dinner. Nothing too shocking but I was hoping that the lines would've died down a bit by then. Luckily Sari was very supportive of my adventure, especially since I was getting her one too (a belated birthday present), so she suggested that I head down as soon as she got home at 5pm. It's a good thing she did too because the line was still long and the store was slowly running out of stock. Luckily the line only went through the undercover area in front of the store so it was about half the length but it still took a long time.
The fact that it wasn't raining was a plus. Not to mention that the Apple employees were constantly passing out water, snacks and sunscreen to protect their customers the 5 hour (yes 5 hour) wait in line wasn't too bad. The other "waiters" were also very friendly. There was sort of a passive aggressive, underlying bitchiness dueto the long wait but we also shared a common hope in getting the iPhones we were after. Near the front of the line the Apple employees would start coming out every so often and warn us that we might not be able to get a 16GB iPhone in black as they were going fast which added strain to the line. Luckily when I got to the front I got two of the last black 16GB iPhones available in the store. When I got back home with the new phones both Rob and Sari sat on the couch for a good half an hour just playing with them, googly eyed.
All in all the experience was very positive and despite standing in the same place for long periods of time wasn't too exhausting. I certainly wouldn't do it again any time soon. At least not until the next iPhone release. :)